


Five Times Sollux Captor Fucked Eridan Ampora In His Head (And One He Didn't)

by temporalDecay



Series: distrait shorts [18]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Daydreaming, Fantasizing, Friendship, M/M, Sexual Fantasy, and a couple graphic bits, and sollux's earnest attempts otherwise, bizarrely platonic erisol, for all there's lots of smut talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:44:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3671187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sollux Captor is absolute <em>shit</em> at personal relationships and the human disease called friendship, has absolutely no fucking idea what boundaries are, how appropriate/inappropriate distinctions work in the context of social interaction, and finds absolutely nothing wrong with crafting detailed sex fantasies about his kismesis' matesprit mostly out of boredom.</p><p>Or, Eridan Ampora is blissfully unaware that he's starring most of Sollux's fap material as random hot guy whatever. While they're having actual conversations. Because Sollux is the Internet and the Internet is for Porn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Sollux Captor Fucked Eridan Ampora In His Head (And One He Didn't)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't like EriSol.
> 
> I really, _really_ don't like EriSol. This is not a secret. This is one of those well-known facts about me, like my love for chai or the fact I drink reader's tears for breakfast.
> 
> I don't like EriSol. And yet, since _[Search For The Face Of Love](http://archiveofourown.org/works/708828)_ was published, people have requested, people have begged, people have whined, and some people have _threatened_ ; all to make me write EriSol in distraitverse.
> 
>  _Search For The Face Of Love_ was published in March 2013, guys. That's two years. Of asking and begging and whining and threatening. I kept insisting it was never gonna happen. People kept insisting otherwise, as if I'm a rock that will wear down after a while. So I began to think, maybe I'm not being clear enough. Maybe I haven't really made my feelings known.
> 
> And then Rie told me I was doing it wrong, and that I should _show_ , rather than tell.
> 
> So here it is, me showing you, rather than telling you, why EriSol is never gonna be anything other than platonic, in Distrait. But I like you, so you get some hot porn along the way, because Sollux is the internet and the internet is for porn. And because I like you, really.
> 
> Yes, even when you ask about EriSol in Distraitverse.

  


* * *

  


_I. Search for the Face of Love._

  


* * *

  


You never really liked Eridan, back in Alternia. 

Well, no, to use the word like would imply that you gave Eridan Ampora enough thought to even form an opinion on him. He just… existed, as far you were aware, and he didn’t merit enough importance to actually truly contemplate. He was a douchebag seadweller who did and said douchey things to KK and FF, but since KK and FF seemed to have a tight leash on that shit, you didn’t really bother to look into it in depth. The few times you met him in person he was sullen and snotty and demonstrating with each sound that came out of his wordflap that he wasn’t worth the effort. 

So you summarily threw him into the mental bin for shit no one gives a fuck about and went on with your life. 

You had better things to occupy your time, anyway. 

But then FF killed Condesce and you got drunk for days after they cut your Ancestor off his helm, before finally stumbling into the block housing the core and hooking yourself up to your personal, tailor-made hell. You knew what you were setting yourself up to, you designed the fucking thing. And it hurt. And for a moment there, you felt yourself failing, just like before, only there was no FF there to keep you whole because she was too weak and shaken still, from her fight, and that was exactly why you chose to do it then, instead of waiting. You didn’t want anyone to stop you. The rest of that sweep was a blur of color and sound and information that threatened to make your pan burst with the influx of everything happening so much all the fucking time, until you realized your pan had lost its borders and there was literally no limit to how much you could stretch. Feferi was mad, Terezi was annoyed and Karkat was oblivious. And it was okay, you thought, it was going to be alright. 

Some days it was, some days it wasn’t, but duality has always been your shtick and 50% of good days was 50% more good days you’d ever had, before. 

Things changed, people shuffled into place and you worked on soothing things and making sure your quadrant grid would be strong enough to sustain the fuckery you were sure to subject it in the future, by virtue of being you. That’s why you started watching him, how he entered your awareness once more. Because KK was wrecked with guilt and sorrow and a broken heart that would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so earnest. So you went to look for the source, squinting as you went, to try and pinpoint what made the dumbfuck seadweller with the dumbass hair so goddamn important KK asked about him every other week, trying very hard not to seem like he was asking. 

You found him much the same you’d known him – for some values of known anyway – before: utterly uninteresting and absolutely unimportant. Of your own volition, you would have never squandered away resources to keep an eye on him, even if your resources are nigh infinite at this point and it’s not a real effort to check on him every now and then. No effort still seemed like too much effort, for Eridan Ampora and his ringless, spidery fingers, his sullen glares and his attempts at being standoffish. KK thrived on the tidbits you brought back to him, though, and that was enough. 

But a funny thing happened, right before your eyes, as you indexed threats and drew nice, glowing targets on top of annoying shitheads that needed to go. 

Eridan started smiling. 

It was small and fleeting and you found yourself reviewing footage when you noticed, because it somehow _shifted_ his entire presence in a way you couldn’t quite explain. It was fascinating to watch, those small gaps in his asshole persona, where the tealblood and the greenblood burrowed deep enough to drag out something that wasn’t shit. It didn’t mean anything really, not to you, because you still didn’t really give a shit about Eridan Ampora for the sake of Eridan Ampora, but it was an interesting diversion like so many other million interesting diversions you had to fill in the gaping holes in your awareness, and you figured looking wouldn’t hurt. 

The sex was hot, though. 

No point in dancing around the issue there, the sex was hot and you like watching, which was, perhaps, the only respite granted to you by the sheer fucking nightmare you turned your existence into. You like to watch and Eridan isn’t, objectively speaking, hard to look at. And it was hot and desperate and stuck in the middle of a quadrant clusterfuck that you were reluctant to admit you hadn’t quite seen before. Or since. 

But still, you kept watching, because Karkat kept asking, and as more tiny gold rings found their way to Eridan’s gills, the center of Eridan’s character seemed to shift and move, as if trying to find an anchor to hold him steady, and before you knew it – you did know it, of course you did, but time is a strange thing to contemplate, when you can see so much of it happening, all at once – Karkat was there and Eridan wasn’t fucking up, and for some strange deranged reason, you were _glad_ he wasn’t fucking up. 

And now, here you are, with an uncomfortable, bubbling mess of conflicted thoughts – not emotions, he’s not high enough in the food chain to warrant emotions, no matter how many times you’ve mentally fingered yourself to the sound of his moaning – under your ribs, as you watch him try – and fail – to climb his way up the paneling of the wall. You haven’t got the foggiest clue why the hell he’s trying to climb up a pipe, claws digging into the tiny gaps between panels to help him hold himself upright, considering there’s a perfectly serviceable staircase available, but you stand there, arms folded into your sleeves as you tilt your head back and wait for the moment when he invariably slips. 

You’re tempted to let him fall, if only because the idiocy of the climb itself deserves to be punished, but Karkat would bitch about it forever and frankly you ain’t got the time to deal with that shit. 

He squeaks between clenched teeth, when you catch him with your powers, slowing down the fall until his feet are firmly on the ground. 

For a second there, he towers over you, shoulders wider from up close than you expected, but then the moment passes and he shrinks into a slouch that somehow invalidates the height and size advantage. You've seen it thousands of times before, of course, but you never really did realize the extent of it, until you are subjected to it. 

“Lord Captor,” he says, voice strained, and part of you wonders if he misses his rings, if only to have something to fiddle with while he forces himself into as unthreatening a figure as he can. 

You blink at him, and blurt out the words, honestly not out of malice, but mostly bewilderment. 

“You told my moirail to go lick the inside of your nook, but you’ll call _me_ Lord?” 

Color blooms all over Eridan’s face, trailing up along his fins. It’s almost cute. 

“Yes, well,” he tries, shrugging slightly, “I do care more about your opinion than hers.” 

You don’t really register why right away, mostly because you’re somewhat amused at the notion that you’re somehow more threatening than Terezi. Terezi is the reason Eridan was nearly executed to begin with, you’d have expected him to hang onto a grudge and maybe some fear. But then you realize the thing you have in common, which Terezi doesn’t factor into, and your mouth pulls into an unhappy line. 

You wouldn’t do that to Karkat. You might do it to Eridan if he annoyed you enough and you wanted to make him suffer, maybe, but not to Karkat. The thought irks you. 

“I’m a jerk, Ampora,” you say, honestly, because that’s what you are, and you’ve never been particularly ashamed of it. “I’m not a quadrant smearing jerk, though.” 

He looks at you with a mixture of barely repressed hostility and that unsure nervousness that, in a startling turn of thoughts that nearly makes you cackle out loud, reminds you of shitty mass produced porn. You’ve seen Eridan fuck, he’d do wonderfully in porn. You keep that thought far, far away from your body and your face though, because slipping might give him ideas, and that would not be wise. 

“I didn’t mean—“ he starts, and it’s awkward because it comes to him far easily than you’d have expected, apologizing. 

Of course, he’s spent the last four sweeps apologizing for existing, in his own dumb way, just to survive, so perhaps it’s just practice. It’s amusing, nonetheless. A seadweller that knows how to grovel. You don’t get to see that often. 

“You never do,” you say, with half a shrug and a snort, “but then you know better by now, don’t you?” 

Somewhere along the impossibly wide expanse of your mind, thoughts chase into one another, and you trail off, as you’re wont to do, into a dead-end of imagination and too much information. You think it might be a kink in the programming that administers your resources, trying to fill them all up somehow to keep you too occupied to be dangerous, but you don’t quite complain. It’s the type of bug that’s harmless, and ultimately, goes undetected by anyone other than you. 

“I promised not to fuck this up,” Eridan says, swallowing hard, for a moment throwing his shoulders back enough to loom, just a little, “and I don’t intend to break that promise.” 

The effect is gone, though, replaced by the same meek, cautious and nonthreatening stance after a few seconds. And the thought finally hits on the file you were peripherally aware of, some basement production two or three hundred sweeps old about a meek little virgin turned cumslut with a greenblood kid with horns similar enough to Eridan’s to make you bury another smirk before it reaches your face. 

“Only your neck, apparently,” you tell him, eyebrows arched, and watch with a strange sort of delight as he ducks his head and shuffles noncommittally about it. “What was that about?” 

The movie is too vanilla for it to be Eridan in it, you realize, as the first blowjob scene rolls about. Eridan is a masochist without an ounce of shame about it. So while Eridan fights to get the words out and explain why he’s climbing up walls – you already figured out why, records from security footage show that’s mostly how his superior officer’s troops maneuver inside the maintenance shafts, and he’s probably expected to keep up – you focus on a more entertaining thought and start to direct the new version of the movie, deep in the pockets of your mind. Starring yourself, because who else? You don’t like watching Karkat and Eridan fucking, or well you do, but you don’t want to choreograph it. 

And he’s not hard to look at. 

Eridan shrugs a little as he bitches out his boss and his coworkers, rolling his eyes and slowly talking himself out of his awkward meek posture, and your body nods and hums in the right places, like you could actually give a fuck about anything he’s saying. 

In the movie that’s not really a movie anymore, Eridan’s grasping onto the railing, back arched and knees bent just so, to compensate the height the absolute jerk has on you. You don’t need to imagine what he sounds like, when he’s getting plowed into submission, you have enough records of that to fill up a library. He’d be wet and cold around your bulges, a tight enough fit with both of them lashing hard enough to bruise, but that’s okay, because he _likes_ that kind of shit. Karkat doesn’t scratch him often enough, not like he likes to scratch you up, though you think he’s got his priorities twisted because you don’t really like it when the son of a bitch claws up the back of your thighs, and you’re pretty sure Eridan could come just from having some deep gauges cut up his back. 

He’d make loud, sobbing noises when you tug at the rings, his bulge writhing recklessly between his legs, looking for anything to provide the tiny bit of friction he needs. He’d try to relieve himself, you reckon, so you’d twitch your mind and freeze him, adding enough bite to the blue-red light to make him cry out, and then focus that bite solely on his bulge, until he’s holding onto the railing hard enough to dent it and there’s a steady stream of sticky, goopy violet genetic material pooling on the floor. 

“You haven’t asked for a dispensation,” you say, overlaying the image of wrecked and wasted Eridan slumped on the floor with the sight of Eridan puffed up and annoyed before you, and allowing the tiniest of smirks to pull at your lips. He hates being interrupted, but you honestly couldn’t care less about this story about admins being shitty to each other. Besides you know the whole story already, so there’s no mystery to it and the punchline to the joke is trite at best. When Eridan blinks in confusion, you make a show to roll your eyes, just because he flinches and retreats all at once. “For your black pail. You haven’t sent in the paperwork for the dispensation.” 

There’s a pause, and then he blurts out: 

“How’s that any of your fucking business?” And you think the snarl is more embarrassment than anger, which is fucking hilarious because he’s trying so hard to fold away and hide both. 

“Because you’re my kismesis’ matesprit,” you say, eyebrows arched, “and if you make Karkat cry because you somehow managed to get yourself killed, I will be pissed enough to figure out how to resurrect you, just so I can kill your dumb brinesucking ass again.” 

“I don’t need a dispensation,” he says, tone defensive. And then adds, with the most formal undertone he can manage: “Thank you for your concern, Lord Captor.” 

“Oh go fuck yourself, Ampora,” you reply, almost in good humor, and go back to find Karkat and fuck out the frustration pulsing between your legs. 

It turns out Eridan really doesn’t need a dispensation, mostly because he’s really good at getting people to realize he’s not that hard to look at. He’s easy. Easier than Karkat could handle to know, you imagine. So you don’t quite let him know just yet. 

But you do wonder how many movies is Eridan going to rip off, in his quest to fill the corresponding black pails. 

  


* * *

  


_II. All I Can Do._

  


* * *

  


“How are you even here?” Eridan demands, a mixture of frustrated and drunk that fits right in with the cans stacked up by his feet. “Fuck it,” he adds, after a moment, collapsing on the ground into an awkward pile of limbs. “You’re not actually here.” 

You frown at that proclamation. Somewhere across the Empire, Nepeta is sneaking into a ship, and you input the codes absentmindedly, opening up a path for her to reach her target without much fuss. 

“But I _am_ here,” you say, a tad stupidly. 

“No, you ain’t,” Eridan informs you, wrinkling his nose in annoyance. There’s a steady patch of violet over the bridge of his nose, and his fins keep fluttering erratically, which compounded with the amount he’s drank, you figure he qualifies for the ‘shitfucked’ descriptor. “You’re a fucking figment of my sadistic goddamn imagination.” 

You resist the deadpan for a moment, because it makes Terezi and Feferi and pretty much everyone dead-eye you into submission when you deadpan in the middle of a meeting with this or that highblood Lord or Lady with a metric fucking stick up their goddamn ass. 

And then you remember this is Eridan and what he thinks doesn’t really matter shit. 

“Yes, Eridan, you’ve found me out,” you say, sauntering over to where he’s sitting at the very edge of the catwalk, “I’m the ghost of fuckups past.” 

Eridan stares at you blankly. 

“What.” 

Of course he doesn’t get the reference. That particular movie version of the book is too outdated even for him, even though it’s one of your favorite so far. It’s got the right amount of spooky and dorky and all around ridiculous to be entertaining and you imagine trolls watch that kind of thing to lose and hour or two of their time without having to think too hard. You don’t have that privilege, but you understand the concept. Mostly. You were never movie-guy. Not movie-movie, like Karkat. You were the guy to go to for porn, because you found mining into the adult network and finding absurd and ridiculous porn flicks to be the most hilarious thing in the world. Porn has always been sort of comforting for you, with that clear-cut dealings aspect, where it’s all about sex and getting messy and people moaning loudly and fakely while they shake their ass for the camera over and over again. There’s something almost sweetly simple about porn that you’ve always missed about your actual interactions with people. 

Maybe one day you’ll streamline the indexing process and free up enough resources to go into porn production and regale the universe with the best exploits you can come up with to keep things fresh and entertaining. 

If Karkat weren’t an issue, you’d probably recruit Eridan into it, because it’s Eridan and he loves sex and the fucking idiot is actually very pretty when he gets really into it, and that shit would sell like hot cakes. A mean-spirited corner of your mind wonders if perhaps you all got it wrong, pushing Eridan to the sidelines during the preparation for Feferi’s takeover, and should have instead put him to use to gather resources that way. 

God, you’re such an asshole it still somehow manages to surprise you every now and then how much shit you’re capable of conjuring up between one breath and the next. 

“Just give me a fucking beer,” you say, rolling your eyes with a flourish before plopping down next to him, pretentious robes fluttering and settling heavily around you as you do. 

“But it’s admin beer,” Eridan says, even though he’s pulled a can and is halfway through offering it to you. 

And oh, there goes a terrible thought, squirming between the processes carefully making sure Nepeta’s as undetected as you can make her and your tabs on Karkat’s latest tantrum, to nestle comfortably behind the ever-consuming indexing efforts that tax your resources. 

Eridan is just _so good_ at taking orders these days. Karkat doesn’t really appreciate all the creative ways he could fuck up this moron if he used the right tone. But then, Karkat pities this moron so much it’s almost revolting to look at. You’d have no trouble ordering Eridan around all the fun ways, which the masochistic asshole would probably enjoy far too much, because you really, honestly, sincerely, cannot bring yourself to give a shit about him. 

“I am aware,” you tell him, giving him a pointed look when he hesitates some more. 

“No, really, it’s.” He laughs, awkward and sheepish, head ducked low and grin a tad wider than you think he’d want you to see, but he’s wasted and it’s hilarious. “It’s _really_ fucking shitty. We only drink it ‘cause it’s all we’ve got.” 

He tries to stand and nearly flings himself off the edge in the process. You grab him by the back of his shirt on reflex, then follow up with your psionics because wow, noodle arms half rotting away from being stuck inside the core? Versus actually compact and solid seadweller that’s apparently more muscle than bone after all? 

Yeah, not gonna work out. 

“But I can go get you something better,” Eridan says stupidly, fins twitching. “I had the sherry stuff you like stocked up and everything.” He grins, somehow even _more_ stupidly. “First order I gave.” 

You wonder if he’d obey if you told him to strip. 

Probably not, you consider, but maybe if circumstances were different. They don’t have to be different for the daydream to shift and twist into being, somewhere in the back of your head, though. 

“Just give me the fucking can,” you snap, settling him down on the ground none too gently. “Honestly.” 

He relents after a moment, and then stares stupidly when you actually drink the thing in nearly one gulp. 

…holy _shit_ , it’s so bad you nearly choke when the taste registers before you’re done swallowing. 

Eridan’s cackling like an idiot when you’re done coughing up an airsack, face buried in his hands and shoulders heaving. You have half a mind to shove him off the edge just to shut him up, the asshole. 

“Why the fuck would you even _drink_ that shit?” You ask, rubbing your tongue against your teeth, to try and chase the taste away. 

Of course you know why. The stats for Admin stipends pop up almost without being requested. You shove them away and glower at Eridan with a sort of dark, annoyed resentment about nothing in particular. It’s not his fault your latest fight with Karkat ended up in a sickle thrown at your head, rather than the sex you were aiming for. Even though to be perfectly honest you were hoping to dig something from Eridan to throw it back at Karkat and somehow piss him off enough he has no other option but to fuck you, before he can go and make a mess you’ll need to clean. 

You were not expecting to find Eridan drunk off his ass, though. You make a mental note to add more surveillance to these gaping pits inside the guts of the ship, though you’re not quite sure how to justify the expense without calling too much attention to yourself. You don’t like holes in your web, even though by necessity, all webs have holes in them. You’d seen Eridan squirrel away the moment his shift ended, but you were not expecting what you found. Not even a little. 

“’cause it gets you drunk really quick,” Eridan replies, honestly, folding his legs up under him and resting his elbows on his knees. “After the third one you can’t even taste it anymore.” 

“Huh,” you say, eloquently, and look down at the case sitting nearby. “Sherry doesn’t hit so hard so fast.” 

Eridan laughs, loud and obnoxious and expansive. And then you realize he’s actually occupying space of his own, instead of shrinking about to try and go unnoticed, despite how notable pretty much everything around the bastard really is. 

“Of course it don’t,” Eridan tells you, eyes rolling, “sherry’s expensive. You’re supposed to taste and enjoy that shit. You don’t get drunk on that, it’s a fucking miserable _waste_.” 

You stare at him blankly for maybe a second, no more. Which in itself is kind of monumental, because for a moment, you cannot find anything to corroborate what he’s saying, explicitly. Not until you cross-examine some histories and documents and journals and then it hits you that’s more of a common sense popular knowledge thing, than a rule. 

You don’t really think about it – THAT in itself is monumental, too – and reach out to smack him for it, just out of frustration. 

You’re not in the mood to deal with this shit. 

You’re even less in the mood to have him retaliate the smack with one of his own on reflex. Which again, a bit of a problem, when one of his arms is like… three of yours, wide, and a fuckton times stronger. Your body goes down like a sack of rocks. Eridan sobers up right up at that, freaking and panicking as he shakes you about and clicks like a frightened grub as you figure out how to wake yourself up from a distance. You shove your hand into his face and balance yourself upright, rubbing at the corner of the cheekbone that might or might not be actually dented. You’ll need to step back into the corridor with cameras, to assess the damage properly, but you’re pretty sure Eridan just socked you good enough to give you a black eye. 

“You’re gonna get me so fucking drunk,” you say, flaring your nostrils at him. “So. Fucking. Drunk.” 

Eridan stares at you like you’ve gone mad. Maybe you have, people are being dumb and Nepeta just killed four morons you really wish she hadn’t, and Karkat is writing angry letters in his desk and you’re in the bottom of some maintenance shaft, with Eridan Ampora, a case of truly shittastic beer and a blooming black eye. 

You’ve lost control of your life somehow, and you don’t really think you care anymore. 

“…sure,” he says, almost tentative. “I can do that. I…” 

“Shut the fuck up,” you snarl, snatching a can and swinging it back under his scrutiny with only a shudder this time. “If you apologize to me again, I’m gonna fucking gag you.” 

You shouldn’t have said that, of course you shouldn’t have, you’re imagining almost at the same time you say it. But then Eridan goes and makes it worse and leers at you. A playful, taunting leer, barely restrained. He’s too drunk to keep being sober, it seems, more so when you’re not about to skin him alive for punching you. Eridan is always stupid when he’s drunk, you remember, recalling several notable incidents, including one with a tiny, ruffled tealskirt that actually makes you snort outloud. 

God, he looked hot in that, legs going on for fucking forever. Maybe you’ll dig out that footage again and send it to Karkat as an offering of peace. 

“Hitting black on your kismesis’ matesprit, Lord Captor?” He fakes a sultry tone far too well for your tastes. “That’s beneath you.” 

The image comes, unbidden and unstoppable. Bound and gagged and begging for it. You’d order him to and he’d go, spread his legs wide and let you do anything you want. 

“Keep it up,” you say, and yes, the beer works wonders, sending a good deal of runtime processes into a knot way faster than your usual drunken escapades do, “and _you’ll_ be beneath me.” 

Through the fog of alcohol in your veins – you’re a lightweight, the abuse you’ve put your body through will never let you be anything other than a lightweight – and without the support of additional viewpoints to clear up the image, you see Eridan open his mouth to say something and then pause to consider, guarding up almost at once. Not meek, not exactly, but holding back the bite you know he has. 

“…what are we doing?” He asks, tentative, as if remembering his place and yours, miles and miles above. 

“Drinking,” you say, shrugging, and reach for that blessed third can that will supposedly invalidate the taste eating through your tongue. “But if that’s more your thing, call me Lord Captor again and I’ll punch your ugly mug.” 

He frowns, which would look serious and composed if he couldn’t stop swaying in place to try and avoid faceplanting into the floor. He cradles a can in his hands, fiddling with the top nervously, and you inwardly wish the asshole would just replace the fucking rings already and call it a day. God, he’s such a fucking tight ass bastard fucking him might actually be painful. You choke on a laugh at the mental image that invariably comes from that. 

“But why me?” He asks, after a moment, cautious and you wonder what’s like, to be as stupid as Eridan Ampora seems to be. 

“Because I’ve had a shitty day and I was going to fuck with you to fuck with Karkat but honestly at this point I might as well just get drunk,” you say, eyebrows arched as you shrug. “Seriously shitty day.” 

Something in Eridan’s expression holds for a moment longer, tense and coiled, and then bleeds out as he sighs, shoulders slumping. 

“What the fuck _ever_ , Lord—“ You surprise both of you by actually punching him in the jaw. It probably hurts you more than him. Eridan chokes on a laugh. “Captor? Sollux.” He arches both eyebrows, as if testing the waters. “Sol?” 

“Hmm,” you hum thoughtfully, before deeming it appropriate. You shower him with sparkles of red and blue that make him shriek a laugh, as a result. 

“Fuck, you want to talk about shitty with _me_?” He snorts, shaking his head and messing up his hair with his claws. “Holy fuck, sit the fuck down and get fucking schooled, Sol.” 

You drink four more beers and nod along the conversation as Eridan dissolves into a bitching fit. You congratulate yourself when you content yourself to snort and snark at the appropriate times, while you derail your little mental trainwreck of utterly pornographic thoughts, wondering why exactly is anyone insane enough to shove their bulge down Eridan’s throat, considering the nightmare of crooked fangs he calls a mouth. Karkat and half his bar flings seem to really, really like the idea, though. 

When Karkat asks where the black eye came from, you tell him, in your most innocent tone, that Eridan is harder to seduce than you’d bargained for. 

The look on his face is worth the matching shiner you get for your troubles, though the fact your face’s symmetrical again does help somewhat. 

  


* * *

  


_III. This Love That Has No Nature._

  


* * *

  


“We should have sex,” you muse, almost plaintively. 

Eridan sprays beer like you’ve only seen in movies, and the thought disrupts the pleasant flow of fucking him up a wall, fingers digging into the gills, slow and careful, like various underground kink sites inform you it’s actually possible to do without actually killing the sucker in question. You’re sad to see the fantasy unravel, if only because over the sweeps you’ve known Eridan, you’ve grown to really appreciate just how much the jerk likes sex. You wish some of it would rub off on Karkat – pun wholly, unashamedly intended – because dear god, does Karkat need to loosen up. 

“Wow,” he says, dragging the consonants obscenely as he gives you a side eye. “Okay, what the hell.” 

You put down your can and look at him over your shoulder, head hanging because it’s honestly too much goddamn effort to keep it upright. 

“We should have sex,” you motion with a finger, very nearly poking out his eye with a claw. “You and me. It’d be hot.” 

Eridan splutters a little. 

Then a lot more, when you lean in and plant a sloppy wet kiss on his mouth. He kisses back on reflex, you think, because as soon as he figures out what’s happening, he’s shoving you away hard enough that if you didn’t have your powers, your body would be plummeting down the shaft into the abyss. You cackle a little as Eridan splutters, two bright splotches of purple high on his cheeks and cross his nose as he snarls. 

“I told Karkat,” you say, before he can ask. And he goes quiet and squinty before putting two and two together and swaying somewhat. You giggle nasally, hysterical and angry and terrified, and you really shouldn’t be hanging out with him, when it’s so damn obvious you need your moirail and some fucking peace and quiet to keep yourself under control with more than the layers upon layers of programming slowly driving you mad in their attempts to keep you sane. “I don’t think I’m your matesprit’s kismesis anymore.” 

Eridan scowls. 

“So what?” He demands, reaching a hand to drag you back into solid ground. “You’re not sure, so you gonna make _damn_ sure?” He smacks you upside the head, before slumping down the ground at your feet. After a moment, he drags you down with a jerk on your wrist that feels almost harsh enough to dislodge the arm from its socket. “I swear to fucking god, you’re so goddamn stupid it should be a crime.” 

“Fuck off, Eridan,” you mutter snidely, reaching for another can. When he slaps your fingers away, you glower and shock him hard enough to make him shriek, just because you’re petty that way. “It’s not like I haven’t seen you fuck a million times before anyway.” 

“Because that’s not creepy at all!” He squeaks, squinting at you before sighing. “But no. We’re not gonna fuck because—“ 

“I like the piercing on your bulge,” you offer helpfully, mostly because it makes him choke on his self-righteous speech. 

“— _BECAUSE_ ,” he goes on, admirably, “you probably haven’t completely fucked up shit, since Kar hasn’t said anything and I’m not about to fuck up my matespritship helping you fuck up your kismesissitude because you’re a slut who can’t keep it in his pants.” 

You snort and kick at his thigh. 

“Slut, really?” You arch both eyebrows, leering. “ _You_ are calling _me_ a slut. **_You_**.” 

It takes him a moment to get it. Probably because he’s about as shitfaced as you are. 

“Yeah, this whole Big Brother thing is gonna make insults hard,” he admits, frowning. There’s a pause. “And arguing. Arguing must be hard. Shit, Kar’s a saint.” 

“Pft, he’s a jerk,” you say, glowering down at your can of beer. 

Eridan glares. To his credit, it’s actually almost intimidating. 

“Do I have to throw you off the edge again?” He asks irritably, eyes narrowed. 

You roll your shoulders. 

“Well, since you’re not going to make an honest troll out of me and throw me into the concupiscent platform—“ 

“Oh my god—“ 

“You might as well,” you finish, sniffing disdainfully. 

“Will you _shut up_?” He grouses, taking a moment to put his face in his hands. “What is it with you and having sex with me anyway? You’ve never even liked me!” 

“Still don’t,” you say thoughtfully, nodding to yourself. Then shrug and mess up the coding of Karkat’s husktop just to make yourself feel marginally better. “Don’t even really hate you, to be honest. You’re just… surprisingly hot.” Eridan’s expression is the textbook definition of unamused. “What? I could totally see myself fucking you. Then again, I could totally see myself fucking a lot of people, but you’re about the only one of those people I actively interact with. So. I definitely see myself fucking you a lot, really.” 

You smirk and finish your beer, as Eridan resumes pushing his face into his hands. 

“Can you please stop talking?” He begs – and begging is a nice thing, that corner of your mind devoted mostly to housing the worst of your lewd thoughts purrs approvingly, storing the idea to play with later – snatching another can which he drowns without pause. “ _Please_.” 

“So many ways to fuck you, Eridan,” you slur, more out of a need to mortify him than any real expectation of things going anywhere, “so, so many. I’ve got a _gallery_.” 

You should, in all honesty, shut up. But you’re drunk – you never get this drunk, unless it’s with Eridan, which strikes you as odd except for the bit where he literally doesn’t matter so anything he sees or hears doesn’t matter either – and the one big secret you were supposed to keep is out so there’s nothing really holding you back anymore. Karkat was angry and in tears and he sent you away when you tried to fix things and _by god_ , you want to fuck the frustration out of your veins. Which of course, Eridan’s not going to help with, because he’s being a responsible, sensible adult and it’s a sad day in your life when Eridan fuckup Ampora is keeping you from self-destructing. 

“This is. The most surreal conversation I’ve ever had,” Eridan says, shaking his head in despair as you pop open another can to drown your annoyances in. “And I had a conversation with my best friend about a sentient puddle of sopor slime.” 

You crack a laugh at that, raspy and mean. 

“Oh god, yes,” you say, shifting so you can lean against him, because he’s more comfortable than the floor and being upright is not exactly an option anymore, “that was _awkward_ to behold.” 

“Stop reminding me privacy is no longer a thing!” Eridan snarls, half-heartedly shoving you off and then pulling you back up when you sway dangerously close to the ground. “Sweet fucking god.” 

“Technically,” you muse, licking a foam mustache off your upper lip, “privacy hasn’t been a thing for a decade or so, now.” You blink at him. “Did you know Zahhak has a mole on his butt?” 

Eridan’s expression falls into desperate neutrality as he stares off into the distance, ignoring his own foamy mustache, which in turn means you’re definitely ignoring the urge to reach out and lick it, because he will definitely throw you off the edge again and you’re too wasted to coordinate psionics properly inside the meatsack you call a body. 

“No, Sol, I did not know that,” he says, enunciating carefully, voice absolutely deadpan, “do you know why? Because Zahhak is a sweaty fucking _cunt_ , and for the sake of my sanity I hope to never be in a position to verify the existence of that mole.” 

“Dunno, dude’s kinda hot,” you say, shrugging as Eridan shudders violently. “I mean, yes, he’s a twat but so are you. And you’re hot.” He snorts. “God, you all people are so fucking hot, and then there’s me. Body pickled away in a jar for half a sweep at the time, it’s a miracle I get laid as much as I do.” 

Eridan gives you an odd look. You brace yourself, because he knows but he doesn’t know, not all of it, just the surface, basic concept of it. He doesn’t know of three inch needles stuck into your spine or that time you fried your own pan trying to program your personality into the mainframe, because your personality is just too fucking complex for bootleg tech to handle. He doesn’t know about Hyerad, and its sixty million corpses, scattered to the void by your command if not your hand. He doesn’t know Feferi looks at you, sometimes, like she could cry, and then doesn’t because she feels she owes it to you not to. He doesn’t know how much your muscles ache, when you wake up, cold and numb and naked, standing in the core, how much it hurts to remember you’re a troll, not just a string of code twisted enough times to pass off as something else. 

You brace yourself, because Karkat – Karkat, who yelled and punched and scratched and screamed at you, forever clinging to your side no matter what you did to send him away, to resist the urge, until you fell so hard into the tangled black you couldn’t even breathe – asked and demanded and looked horrified enough you turned away and ran, because you knew you couldn’t handle watching all his glorious hatred melt into pity. You brace yourself because Eridan is an asshole, the greatest asshole you’ve ever known, petty and self-centered and stupid, but he stocks up absurdly expensive sherry bottles for when you board his ship, and then he sits with you in the dimly lit catwalks of the maintenance shafts and drinks shitty beer until you remember how to laugh until your belly aches. 

You brace yourself and Eridan proves himself the most hateful fucking creature you’ve ever known, because he shudders dramatically before he snorts. 

“You’re a hateful bag of writhing bulges, Sol, trust me, Kar will _not_ shut the fuck up about it,” he says, eyes rolling hard enough they almost make a sound. “I’m not even going to touch your conciliatory shades, but black? Fuck, random Steven off the corridor will do you a solid.” There’s a pause. “Only please don’t because Karkat will murder you and at this point I am so tired of hiding bodies.” 

You want to reach out and claw his eyes out, and you want to kiss him until you tear his lips to shreds on the sharp, jagged daggers you call teeth. You want to blast him out, inside out, focus all your psionics and see if you’ve reached the required strength to literally explode a motherfucker if they annoy you. You want to shove him down the floor, wrap your hands around his throat and then ride his bulge until the foreign, burning pulse of gratefulness stops sinking its claws in your chest. 

“I don’t know,” you snicker, almost without sounding forced, and instead focus on making him splutter, “I’d fit in a bucket or two. No more than three.” 

When Eridan stares at you with that dumbstruck expression, all you can imagine is shoving a bulge down his throat, even though his teeth are a nightmare of pain waiting to happen. You’d fuck his throat so long and good, too, leave him desperate for anything else. And above all else, you’d fuck him until he swallowed his fucking words, until you forgot all about his dumbass choice to not press when he shouldn’t and pretend he understand when he doesn’t. It’s not anger, per se – and you know, because by now the anger would have triggered layers upon layers of conditioning and protocols to keep you grounded and functional, not quite sane – but it’s bitter and brittle, and leaves a worse aftertaste on your tongue, than the shitty beer you’ve been drinking. 

So maybe, you realize, as Eridan splutters and fumbles for words, and your little fantastical sidetrip into porno land evolves into something between cheap hatefuck parade and strings-free fuck-for all, it’s not quite a bug or a glitch, proper, this tendency of yours to derail into porn every now and then but mostly when you invariably end up getting drunk with Eridan, somewhere in the bowels of his ship. It’s a quiet, powerful realization, the sort that maybe is only possible when you’re split up physically not only metaphorically, and also too drunk to stop looking too closely at the facts. 

“I’m going to pretend you don’t know about that,” Eridan croaks awkwardly, wincing, “because otherwise I’ve just about lost all moral grounds to bitch you out about being a fucking depraved asshole.” 

“You filled a bucket with gore,” you sing-song, eyes half-lidded, because in the heels of that realization is the certainty that you don’t fucking care, about it or Eridan or what he might think. “Not a bucket,” you correct yourself, “a _pail_.” You lean in as Eridan flinches back in mortified silence. “With _gore_.” 

He’s making you laugh, the absolute fucking twat, and you don’t have words to describe how much it infuriates you that it works. 

“Please go back to tell me how you’d like to fuck me,” Eridan says after a moment, face buried in his hands. “ _Please_.” 

Because you are an absolute asshole, that is _exactly_ what you do. 

  


* * *

  


_IV. Later And Before And By Yourself._

  


* * *

  


“There’s like five million pornos that start like this,” you say, eyes half lidded as you stare off at nothing, just enjoying the fizzy bubbles coursing through your veins. “This is about where I turn around and start mouthing your bulge through your pants.” 

You don’t remember when you ended up with your head pillowed in his lap, exactly, but it was probably around the time keeping your head upright unassisted became a fucking chore. You don’t quite remember when Eridan became your designated headrest – you do, timestamp in your memories just a small stretch back into the mainframe, but fuck the effort it’d take to do that – but you figure it was somewhere around the time getting shitfaced in the maintenance shafts of the _Leviathan_ was a fucking prerequisite to boarding the ship. 

You swear Karkat invents new swearwords when you ignore his loud, screaming threats to leave his matesprit alive. If Karkat hasn’t figured out, by now, that you’re not going to have Eridan culled, it’s because Karkat is a stupid moron with an entirely despicable tendency to worry about everything, even when it’s not really worry-worthy. 

“Please don’t,” Eridan says, without any real bite to the words, snorting into the rim of his can, lips twitching wryly. “I mean, it was creepy as all fuck before, but now it’s just. Please stop making me imagine my moirail mouthing my bulge.” 

Somewhere between running the Empire, chatting with Feferi and watching Vriska fuck up a diplomatic meeting, there’s a sliver of your consciousness devoted to imagining all the wondrous ways you’d like to fuck Eridan into a sobbing mess at your feet. Terezi calls it your dumbfuck, suicidal crush on Eridan Ampora, and frowns in disapproval whenever you bring it up. You like to rebuke that of course you don’t have a crush on Eridan galaxy-wide-disaster Ampora, you’re not quite that terrible at life choices. You don’t even really want to fuck him, when you get down to it, if only because you’d never do that to Karkat, for all Karkat is a festering, pus-laden fuckgash in the collective ass of trollkind and you hate the smartass little shit more than words can properly express. Part of you wonders what’d happen, though, if you managed to talk him into it, though, without transgressing a quadrant grid. If you reached with Karkat the same balance you’ve reached with Feferi, about devoting yourself to a quadrant but owning up to the reality that you still have wants and hopes elsewhere. But of course, Karkat isn’t Feferi, and Feferi would never be jealous of Aradia, the way you know Karkat would be of Eridan, which would eventually fuck up their own quadrant in the long run. 

You’ll do many, many terrible things, without shame, but you will not purposely fuck up your kismesis’ quadrant grid, because you’re not quite certain Karkat could survive it. 

So you content yourself with your million fantasies of Eridan begging for more, from you or from anyone else you feel like putting in that spot, and accept it as the background music of your existence. 

It’s quite jarring, then, when Eridan brings up your Ancestor and essentially derails that dedicated process into incoherent glitches that threaten to give you a migraine. It was a hot fantasy, too, Eridan’s tongue so far up your nook it touched your seedflap, his fingers doing magical things to your insides. You’re almost sad to see it go. 

“Like the withered old shit would even know what to do with a bulge, if he could get his smartass mouth near one,” you bite out, doubly annoyed – always better to have two reasons to feel something, after all – by the loss of your mental movie and the intrusive thought of the old, withered ghost that would haunt your day terrors, if you still needed to sleep. “I mean—“ 

Eridan shoves you unceremoniously off his lap and your head bounces painfully on the thick, reinforced metal plating of the floor. 

“Don’t,” he says, breathing suddenly raged and eyes narrowed. “ _Sol_.” You snarl at him, still too drunk to sit upright, letting blue and red crackle ominously on your skin, but he doesn’t back down. “You owe me,” Eridan says, with that stupid hitch on his voice that means he’s not really sure of what he’s saying, but there’s no taking the words back anyway. “So don’t.” 

“I owe you,” you deadpan, eyebrows arched as you shift about, trying to find a comfortable posture. “ _I_ owe _you_.” 

You can’t help but laughing a little, snide and low and mean, because the notion is ridiculous enough. Eridan flushes, humiliation making his skin burn violet as he ducks his head, shoulders hunched. His upper lip trembles a little as he swallows hard and nods sharply, trying to gather aplomb. You find some of your anger deflating, between the entertaining show he’s putting up for you and the fact your fantasy can pick up from that subtle lip quiver and turn it into something sexual in two seconds flat. The script is all different now, from what it was, but that doesn’t really matter, it’s enough. 

“For Py—Terezi,” he says, and through the bravado you see the scared, angry wreck he was, when Terezi sent him away. 

You hadn’t thought about that in decades now, and didn’t even realize you still remember it, until your ever helpful mainframe fills in the blanks without being prompted to. You think, off-handily, that you should, at some point, fix that. It’s annoying. 

“Nice try,” you snort, lips pulled into your best sneer, “you deserved everything she did, and you’re not going to guilt-trip me over—“ 

“I deserved what she did,” he interrupts, and oddly enough, you _believe_ his attempts at conviction. He shrugs. “That doesn’t mean I don’t fucking want her _dead_.” There’s enough hatred in Eridan’s voice to give you pause, more so when he smirks, lips still trembling ever so slightly. “But she’s your moirail.” 

“She is,” you say, trying to sound as indifferent as possible, even though all those anger-controlling subroutines are screaming somewhere in the bottomless pool of your awareness. 

“And until today, I never said a word against her,” Eridan goes on, still tense and wary, half-flinching from a blow that you have no real desire to give, because you’d be more likely to break your hand than do any real damage. “Nor I really plan on saying anything else, from here on.” He pauses significantly. “Because she’s your moirail.” 

It’s a fair trade, you suppose, though you don’t like it. Then again, your Ancestor never tried to have you killed and his worst offense has always been his stubborn indifference towards you. You concede, after half a second of thorough deliberation, that Eridan might have a point. You withhold comment for another half a minute, out of spite, just to watch him fight the urge to squirm. It’s been sweeps, since he’s remembered you’re a Lord and he’s not. The script changes again, mid-fuck, and you imagine what it’d be like to remind him of the difference in a more visceral, sexual way. Then you sigh, because he’s looking like he might take it back, and the one thing you like about drinking with Eridan here is that he never takes anything back. 

“I still think we should totally have sex,” you say, somewhat sullen, and refuse to grin when he chokes on an awkward laugh. “Hell, we should have a threesome with KK.” 

Eridan wrinkles his nose and reaches out a hand to flick his claws against your horns. Because you’re a bastard – and because that actually makes your body pulse with faint interest, not that you’d tell Eridan that, he’d never do it again if he knew – you moan theatrically and inch your way back until you can hook your chin on his thigh. 

“That’s never going to happen,” he says, solemnly, but presses a freshly opened can to your loose fingers anyway. 

You use your powers to tilt the can back against your lips without pouring it down your chin, and shrug as you swallow. 

“It’d be hot,” you say, because it’d be and because _I know_ would kill the fun, and go on imagining him writhing with a bulge up his nook and one up his wastechute, while he traces a claw around the rubber caps of the ports along the back of your skull. 

A troll can dream, anyway, and you’re one of the few who gets to dream in HD. 

  


* * *

  


_V. Breathe In._

  


* * *

  


“I’m still angry at you,” Eridan announces, as you step up to sit next to him, on the very edge of the catwalk overlooking the dark void below. 

He presses a can of beer into your hands without having to be asked, though, so you reckon he can’t be _that_ mad. You shrug and in the process bump your shoulder against his arm, amused by the billionth time at the sheer size and girth difference between you. He’s solid and lean in a way you’ll never be, mostly because your chosen fate will forever doom you to be underfed and skeletal no matter what. Your muscles haven’t completely atrophied yet because Equius had a hand in creating your core and he knew enough about bodies to keep you from becoming a rotten troll-shaped popsicle, but you’ve long made peace with the fact physical prowess is never going to be a thing you excel at. 

“I know,” you say, sighing long and loud, as the beer settles in your gut, cold and heavy. You probably should have eaten something before starting down the road of getting wrecked with Eridan and cheap beer, but you forgot. Or didn’t care enough to remember. Either or. “You’d have died if I hadn’t though.” 

Eridan echoes your sigh with one of his own and drowns his beer with an annoyed twitch of his shoulders. From up close, without the slight distortion that comes from a lens, you study the damage done to his face. The scab is a dull, dark violet that looks almost black, but you can already see the beginnings of a scar around the edges. He’s a seadweller after all; he has endurance that makes puny lowbloods like you seem like paper dolls. The wound will scar, and if he’s lucky, disappear after a few molts. And he’s alive, and so is the rest of the crew of the Morrigan, so it all works out fine, even if you had to break one of the taboos in your… you don’t want to call it friendship, because you’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to fantasize about fucking your friends with quite the wild abandon you do Eridan, but you can’t honestly say he’s just a convenient way to get back at Karkat, when he’s being particularly daft. 

You wonder what he’d do, if you reached out and licked the scar-scab, digging your fingers into his hair or maybe holding a horn tightly right at the base. Probably throw you into the darkness below, considering now he’s got a brand new spade to adorn his quadrant grid and from what you know of him – and at this point, you know a lot – Eridan would cut off a hand before cheating on a quadrant. You refuse to go down the self-deprecating road, considering where your thoughts are prone to go all the time, when you think about Karkat and Feferi and their ability to tie themselves down to you. You cannot imagine life without them, of course. You’ll push and pull and do what’s necessary, make the hard choices and sink your claws into the mud until you’re elbow-deep in shit, all for their sake. But even if you’ve reduced yourself to a measly planet orbiting around Feferi’s radiance, if Karkat is the hateful fire that keeps you going, you keep yearning to kiss the dip between Aradia’s breasts and dig your teeth into Eridan’s neck until he spreads his legs and yields. 

Because you’re all about duality, you think bitterly, and only Terezi has serendipity chaining your soul down to hers, preventing you from ever looking any other way. 

“And I’m grateful for that,” Eridan says, after the silence has dragged on for too long, and hooks an arm around your shoulders in a way that makes you want to tilt your head and gore him straight in the gills adoring his neck. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not mad.” 

“Be mad all you want,” you retort, bumping a horn into his jaw instead, “I’d say you came out on top of this.” You grin lasciviously at him, if only because it still makes him blush and that’s something you refuse to give up, no matter what. “And below, too, if memory serves.” 

You were oddly disappointed, to see Eridan and Equius do the kismesissitude dance together. The sex was hot, of course, but Equius is nowhere near as domineering as someone like Eridan would need, you reckon. Equius is too nice, to handle Eridan at his worst. You were also hysterically amused, because once upon a time, you used to fantasize about Equius Zahhak in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of how you do about Eridan, these days. Of course, Karkat happened before Equius could make his dumbass feelings known – you hate Karkat, you exist solely to hate Karkat some days, but you still think about it every once in a while and wonder what’d it be like, trying to straddle Equius’ hips with your stick-like legs, if only because you’re you and you always have enough time to entertain yourself with those thoughts, no matter what else you’re doing. 

Eridan opens his mouth to retort something, and then swallows back the remark to glare at you over the bright stripe of violet across his nose, running parallel to the scar. 

“Stop imagining, you festering bag of perverted shit,” he hisses, fins fluttering in mortification. 

You weren’t, not quite. But how could you not, now that he’s pointed it out? You leer as you remember the sight of Eridan’s gut twisting as his body struggled to take in all of Equius’ length. You insert yourself into the image with surgical precision, ignoring the ghost of bitterness over what-if and could-have-been, shoving a bulge up Eridan’s ass and one into the constraining, near-painful tightness of Equius’ nook. Just for effect, you lick your lips suggestively, snuggling further against Eridan’s side. 

“Can’t stop,” you sing-song, just because Eridan bristles some more, “won’t stop.” 

He leans in and head-butts you almost affectionately. It leaves you blinking as he laughs and finishes his drink, opening the next can without a pause. 

“The hell was that for?” You ask, frowning and rubbing your forehead with your own can. It didn’t hurt, per se, but you’re still keenly aware Eridan could probably break you – in fun and not so fun ways – if he wanted to. 

“Warning shot,” Eridan summarizes, affecting his voice with his best snotty tone. “You won’t see it coming, when it’s for real.” 

You laugh, low and raspy and toast to him, ignoring the way the edges of the fantasy melt bit by bit, despite your determination to hold onto it. You remember when the fantasies about Equius vanished entirely, too, but you’re not done enjoying Eridan the same way you’re done enjoying Equius. You refuse to give up your entertainment just yet. 

“ _Nerd_ ,” you taunt, but clink your can to his, when he offers. “Bring it on.” 

  


* * *

  


_I. Spiraling Down._

  


* * *

  


“God,” Eridan says, snarling defensively when he sees you, “not you too!” 

He looks worse in person, than he does from the thousands of cameras in the ship. He’s thinner than usual, which makes all his edges look sharper and his snarls fiercer. He’s like an angry brushstroke, a halting trace in violet and black, curled defensively around himself. Still, he’s doing better now, than when you dropped the news. So maybe your asshole of an Ancestor is not entirely useless at keeping Eridan sane. So maybe letting Syzygy deal with Karkat was the best choice. There’s cracks under the surface, you don’t really know how you know, but you know they’re there, and you keenly wish they weren’t. Because Eridan is an asshole and a bastard, but you’ve decided, at some point, that you don’t want to see him shatter inside out, under the weight of his own feelings. 

“Like I’d fucking come all the way here just to pamper your dumb ass,” you say, even though you realize that’s exactly what you’ve done, when you realized your Ancestor’s shooshing and Karkat’s kindness and Equius’ awkwardness and Syzygy’s ruthlessness weren’t quite enough to get him through this. “I’m here to get laid, I just figured you could use a drink, in the meantime.” 

Eridan stares at you, head tilted slightly to the side, and you stare back impassively. You reckon you’re both fixated on the same thing, which is the almost glaring lack of innuendo to that sentence. You refuse to acknowledge it, even though it was essentially a silver platter to serve a come-on with. Instead you stare at Eridan, tall, thin and dressed in ill-fitting clothes because at this point his uniform is as much part of him as his stupid stripe of colored hair, and wait for the porno to start going in the back of your mind. 

It doesn’t. Not even when he smiles at you – he’s never smiled at you, before, smirked and sneered and grinned and even leered, once or twice, sure, but never quite that tilt of lips that cuts deep with how sincere it is – and lets his shoulders sag. 

“Yeah,” he says, letting himself fall to the floor with a small thud, all bony knees and pointy elbows, “yeah, I’d like that.” 

You don’t ask _are we friends?_ because you’re not a grub anymore and you’re not quite as insecure as to need to overstate the obvious. So you go sit next to Eridan and drink yourself into a coma, so when he starts crying you just hook an arm around his shoulders and do him the favor of keeping your mouth tightly shut. 

You never stop asking for a threesome, just like you never stop blowing up tablets in his face, because the little rituals keep you both going despite the odds. But you’re certain Eridan knows you’ve stopped really meaning it, like you used to. Terezi loves you enough to not point out that’s exactly how Aradia takes your off-hand remarks, and you love her enough to hold onto her tightly, rather than crack a joke about your penchant for duality fucking up your life. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is canon.
> 
> I've been sitting on this thing for a while, I hope you've enjoyed the porn, at least, and at best come to understand why I can't see romantic/quadrant EriSol happening in Distrait. These two are bros for life. 
> 
> You're no longer allowed to say I never do nice things for you guys.


End file.
